


Full Circle

by stereonightss



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 04:03:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17994497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereonightss/pseuds/stereonightss
Summary: It was a habit that started in their parents’ homes, calling one another by name.





	Full Circle

It was a habit that started in their parents’ homes, calling one another by name.

Shindou was Shindou until Shindou’s mother was Shindou and then Hikaru was just Hikaru. It started in Akira’s head, a private recategorization, a lateral slide from colleague and friend and rival to something that was a mix of all three. He didn’t have a word for what that was, except ‘Hikaru.’

Hikaru often came to the Touya house when Akira was alone and the only sounds were the clink of the stones and the bubbling fountain in the courtyard and at last the sound of their argument.

The one time he came for the former Meijin’s study group, when the house was alive with discussion and warmed by Akiko’s practiced hospitality, Hikaru measured himself against the people who called Touya by his family name and those who got to call him Akira. He considered his place in Touya’s life and came to his own conclusion that he should be able to say Akira too, and he did so in his own mind from then on out.

The first one to let a name slip in private was Hikaru. It was in the back of Touya’s go salon over a brutal match after a brutal move where Akira struck like a viper, reducing Hikaru’s thickness in a corner to a crumbling ruin, and it fell from his lips in a moment of genuine awe.

The first one to let a name slip in public was Akira. They were in front of Kosemura and a camera crew and lights and a group of on-hangers. Hikaru was asked to comment on Touya’s upcoming match with Ogata Judan. Hikaru said something aggressive and a little rude in Akira’s favor, and Akira chided “Hikaru!” in a tone that was embarrassingly paternal. The crowd erupted in titters and snaps and camera flashes and Akira made a mental note not to read the coverage for this particular incident.

A week later, when he skimmed the article despite himself, he was shocked to see the cameraman had captured the exact moment he’d said Hikaru’s name: Hikaru looking brightly at the camera, wearing his magnanimous grin with his fan cradled in the palm of his hand and his head inclined toward Akira, and Akira leaning in himself, his trademark intensity trained on Hikaru, the corner of his lips quirked up in the barest hint of a smile.

“The Wind Beneath the Wings of Rivalry,” the headline read, with a byline about how their legendary rivalry with its legendary blowups hid a deeply supportive friendship.

Akira pressed the magazine closed. Waya 4 dan was Hikaru’s friend. So was the 5 dan Isumi, whom Akira liked better. Yashiro, maybe, they seemed to keep up a correspondence. But himself? What word could be given to what he was?

Hikaru saved the article, tearing it out of the magazine so he could tape it up in his room, next to a particularly flattering picture of them from coverage of a title match, Akira’s arm a blur as he surged at the board.

The press liked to call them fire and ice, and it made Hikaru laugh every time, how wrong they were. Hikaru had never known Akira to be icy. Even in those moments when Akira was determined to ignore him, he exuded an oppressive heat. And really, Hikaru was ice, creeping crystalline around the board until his opponent was trapped solid, frozen from all sides. Akira was the fire, the swift blade, the impulse and instinct to burn.

Touya Akira of the famed quiet intensity and mild manners and unshakable control was the most volatile person Hikaru ever met, more of a volcano than a glacier.

Hikaru liked it that way.

Some time after the second Hokuto cup he realized with a twinge of guilt that he started fights with Akira on purpose, just to see his color rise, just to hear that edge in his voice. It was a guilty pleasure, getting those long fingers to tremble in anger, to see the vicious curl of his lip around a cutting word.

Some time after the third Hokuto cup, he realized Akira did the same thing. They blew up over the reading of a hand from a match that neither of them even played in, and when Hikaru snarled and butted Akira’s forehead and squeezed his fan till his knuckles went white, Akira broke character, flashing a smile that was half hungry half satisfied, before he pulled himself together enough to frown.

Akira was more careful after that, to the point of avoidance.

Hikaru dragged Waya and Isumi out after a study session so he could rant into a bowl of Ramen about how hard it had been to schedule casual matches with Akira, and was Akira dodging him, that jerk? Because they’d only played twice in three weeks and both times Akira had to leave before they properly reviewed.

Isumi smiled to himself and wondered if Hikaru realized how special it was that he got to monopolize not only Touya’s regard, but his time too. Isumi couldn't think of many people who wanted to know the spearhead of the new wave and also had the fortitude not to be intimidated by him, polite though he was to everyone except Hikaru.

Hikaru had no fear when it came to Touya Akira, and that set him apart from every other player in the lower dans.

It was one thing not to fear the dragon—for as Akira came into his own, he showed even more claw, more tooth—but it was another thing entirely to drive the dragon like some bleach-banged snake charmer. Akira came alive around Hikaru, shaking off his arctic charm, and Hikaru snapped into focus around Akira like a whip. Watching them, Isumi thought of a painting that hung in a common room in the Beijing dorms, a great yellow tiger leaping up at an emerald dragon with streaks of lightning cutting the sky behind them.

Claw for claw, tooth for tooth, Touya and Shindo were bound together in their meteoric ascent, leaving Isumi and the others scrambling in their wake.

The animal ferocity in their matches made any official game they played a sure sell for fans. It was only a matter of time before they were clashing over titles. They knocked each other out of the running for Kisei, for Meijin. They played each other for the right to the Judan finals, and people talked about their game long after Ashiwara walked away with the title. Hikaru lost the Gosei 3-2 to Kurata in the finals, Akira the Tengen to Ogata by two moku in the final game, and the fights over the reviews they held even got their own write ups (“Rival Rumble!” said one headline; “Contenders Clash!” said another).

When Akira won the Hon’inbou, they were nineteen years old.

That evening, when he finally left the yugen no ma, he felt bathed in a protective aura that kept him apart from himself, from the mundane tasks of interviews and hand-shaking and pictures. He watched himself as though from the ceiling, responding to the post-match festivities with a transcendent detachment. Ever gracious and radiating poise, he stayed exactly as long as he had to and no longer.

Only Ogata fumed when Akira took his leave. Ashiwara wanted to take him drinking, there were people still who wanted to congratulate him, but he was in no mood to socialize—he longed for some quiet where he could pray in the only way he knew how, with slate and clamshell, in gratitude.

Kuwabara caught him by the elbow as he slipped into the elevator.

“Good showing, kid,” the old man said as the doors closed. “Better you than that Ogata.”

“Thank you very much, Kuwabara-sensei,” Akira said, tight and opaque.

Kuwabara arched one of his wooly brows.

“Leaving your own party so soon? Young man like you, I’d expect at least a drink or two.”

“I’m not much of a drinker, to be honest,” Akira said.

“Oh? Shame, that. What is it, got a little girlfriend waiting at home?”

Akira’s eyes flashed.

“My schedule leaves little time for girlfriends, Kuwabara-sensei.”

“Hah, indeed. More for the rest of us then.”

Kuwabara lit a cigarette. He took a deep drag and then pointed at Akira with his yellowed fingers, trailing smoke in their wake.

“You can fool most of them with that goody boy act,” he said. “By all means, pretend you’re like your father, the absolute drip. But nothing gets by me. You’re a wild thing underneath.”

“Beg your pardon,” Akira said. The elevator doors opened and Kuwabara squinted into the dim lobby.

“Ah, just as I thought. You had a better offer than us old farts,” he said, clapping Akira jovially on the shoulder.

“Don’t take too long to fully bloom, you sprat,” he said as he ambled toward the exit of the Nihon Ki-in. “I like to cut them down when they’re ripe. A relic like me can only wait so many springs.”

“Going senile, old man? You’re talking nonsense again!”

Hikaru’s familiar voice cooled Akira’s fire instantly.

“Big surprise seeing you here. He’s right behind me.” Kuwabara said with a wink.

Hikaru was waiting by door with a kind of wide-eyed joy on his face, hands tucked behind his back.

“See ya around, old man,” Hikaru said.

Kuwabara paused as he passed Hikaru, looking him up and down, then threw back his head and laughed until he started coughing.

“Not if I see you first, kid.”

As he disappeared around the corner, Kuwabara started to whistle a tune Akira recognized as “Kimi to Istumademo” from an old record his father used to play. The song and the cigarette smoke faded behind him, and then they were alone.

“Congratulations, Touya Hon’inbo,” Hikaru said with a smile.

Akira tensed, poised on the edge of thinking Hikaru was making fun of him. But then Hikaru produced a little bouquet of flowers from behind his back.

“For you,” Hikaru said, sheepish. “Your first title. It’s a big deal, right?”

Akira took the bouquet: three healthy camellias, one red, one white, one yellow. He remembered what his mother taught him about the language of flowers and for a moment the wall he had carefully erected around Shindou Hikaru threatened to break. He shook the thought from his head, deciding it had to be coincidence.

“When did you—”

“Before the match,” Hikaru said. “I had a good feeling.”

They walked in electric silence to Akira’s apartment, brushing elbows and trading looks that said soon, soon we’ll talk about this.

The first title among them, the first step of the next phase of their shared path.

They slipped off their shoes and hung their coats and Akira trimmed the flower stems and slipped them into a vase his mother had bought him, and only when they were finally sitting over a goban did he feel like he’d fully returned to his body.

He felt grounded and dizzy and hot and restless and victorious all at once. He tasted blood, his ears rang, his breath came quick, and then there was Hikaru.

Hikaru sat on the other side of the board, fan half open against his thigh, so still and solid and peaceful and radiating an understated adoration that it pulled Akira’s spinning senses into focus.

“I thought it would be me,” Hikaru said, laughing to himself. He snapped his fan shut. The sound made the hairs on the back of Akira’s neck stand up.

“You thought what would be you,” he said, the pressure of the day stripping the last of his propriety and leaving him feeling raw and open.

Hikaru squinted at him so intensely that it nearly made him squirm. He tucked a strand of glossy black hair behind his ear.

“Nevermind,” Hikaru said.

Hikaru handed him the goke, and move by move they replayed the match that won Akira the title.

“This move,” Hikaru said, pointing to the space with his fan before Akira placed the stone. “It reminds me of Sai.”

Akira’s hand hovered over the board. He saw the conflict on Hikaru’s face and he dropped the stone he held back into the goke.

“I’ll tell you now,” Hikaru said. “You have his title, you deserve to know.”

“You don’t—”

Hikaru leaned over and sifted his fingers through Akira’s long hair. He pinched the end of a clump of strands, rubbing it between his forefinger and his thumb.

“Your hair reminds me of his. I bet this is what it felt like,” Hikaru said. He tucked the hair behind Akira’s ear and sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I don’t know for sure. We never touched. I wish I could have hugged him once. Even just once.”

Akira waited, scalp buzzing, mind buzzing. He waited and watched as Hikaru scrubbed his face with both hands and blinked down at his palms.

“You’re the only person who would believe me,” he said at last. “You’re the only person who deserves to know.”

“About Sai?”

Hikaru nodded.

“I’m really an idiot sometimes.”

Akira shook his head. “Well that’s not news. I tell you that all the time.”

Hikaru smiled at nothing, eyes so far off and brimming with tears and private sentiment that Akira felt suddenly, profoundly alone.

“Sometimes when I watch you play, I see him. So intense. He looked like that when he was serious about a game,” Hikaru said, gripping the fan with both hands.

“It’s exciting, facing that kind of intensity. But it took a lot to make him that serious. Your dad did it. You did too.”

Akira felt a chill rush over him.

“Most of the time he acted like a little kid though. I’d forget how old he was sometimes.”

“How old was he?” Akira said quietly, wondering at the pang of jealousy he felt.

Hikaru looked at him with a desperate seriousness.

“About a thousand.”

Akira laid out the things he knew about Sai in his mind, trying to read the pieces like an unfamiliar joseki. He felt the points take shape before him and it filled him with a shaky sense of wonder.

“Why don’t you tell me the whole story,” Akira said at last, folding his hands in his lap.

And Hikaru did. Told him of time he met Sai, how in the wake of Sai’s suicide, his longing to touch the hand of god sealed his soul to a goban. Their first game with Akira, the net go. Playing Touya Meijin. Sai’s disappearance, how Hikaru searched for him for months, how he searched for him still in every game. The dream, the fan.

Hikaru’s go, Sai’s final resting place.

The information hung in the quiet air between them for a few minutes. Hikaru waited, trying to read the thoughtful look on Akira’s face.

“Where is Shuusaku’s goban?” Akira finally asked, voice reverent.

“My granddad’s storage shed, still,” Hikaru said with a relieved sigh. Akira didn’t seem to think he was crazy. “It’s collecting dust next to all the useless junk in there. I can’t bring myself to take it home.”

“Hmm,” Akira said, running his fingers over the goke in front of him. Hikaru watched those long fingers trace the patterns of the wood grain.

“To think that such a treasure is in such an ordinary place, overlooked for so long,” Akira said with awe. He spared a look at Hikaru, eyes soft and open and kind and glistening with sentiment.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Hikaru swallowed. He had never been able to share his grief before. Tears welled up in his eyes and spilled one after the other down his cheek till they dripped on his hands, on his fan, onto the black slate stones in front of him.

Akira shifted around the goban and extended a hand toward Hikaru, but Hikaru may as well have been a million miles away. He seemed unreachable in anguish. Akira thought if he touched Hikaru then it’d burn him to the bone, and Hikaru’s choked sobs pinched his ears until Akira’s own breath came ragged in sympathetic agony. He touched Hikaru anyway, hand trailing lightly over his shoulders until it rested soft on the back of his neck. Like that Akira sat, raw but bolstered by the warmth of Hikaru’s skin against his own, waiting patiently until Hikaru’s tears ran out.

“I didn’t know what I had in Sai until it was too late,” he said, looking up at Akira. “I’m not gonna make the same mistake with you.”

He twined his hands around Akira’s neck and pulled their their bodies together.

“I’m sorry,” Akira said. “Hikaru, I’m sorry.”

The smooth sound of the voice in his ear was a searing balm on Hikaru’s dissipating grief. But the smell of Akira’s hair, soft floral and vanilla, and the skin scent underneath as Hikaru took deep trembling breaths brought fresh tears to his eyes.

“No. I’m sorry,” Hikaru said. “Here I am going on about Sai. This is your night. I’m so proud—”

“Hikaru!” Akira said with a ferocity that stunned them both.

Wide- and glassy-eyed and lips parted in surprise, Hikaru looked so much the way he did at twelve when Akira first laid eyes on him. It broke something open inside him and the world of black and white he’d occupied for so long began to dissolve into a million precious shades of gray.

“Be quiet,” he said, leaning in to press his lips against Hikaru’s.

Akira could taste the salt of tears on Hikaru’s lips and citrus bubblegum and something deep and human and Hikaru’s broad, warm hands up against his ribs were more than he could handle in that moment and he wrenched himself back with a gasp.

“Aki…ra,” Hikaru says, hands hovering between them, still shaped around the ghost of Akira’s body.

Akira pushed himself up on shaky legs and took a steadying breath. Hikaru was smiling, he was breathless and laughing and Akira pulled him up by the wrists until they could press the length of their bodies together.

They kissed the way they played, fast and decisive and deep. Akira gripped the hair at the base of Hikaru’s neck, and Hikaru grabbed Akira’s hips, gote for sente. But then Hikaru arched against Akira’s trembling body and they met at heat and hardness and Akira moaned into Hikaru’s mouth and it was atari, it was Hikaru’s initiative and he tugged at Akira’s sweater until they parted, panting, long enough to peel off their shirts.

“Hikaru,” Akira breathed, struck by the vision of Hikaru’s compact form, slicked with sweat and gleaming, face radiant and smiling bright.

“You waited for me,” Hikaru said, eyes shining. “You always wait for me.”

“I’d wait a thousand years if I had to,” Akira said, threading his hands through Hikaru’s hair.

But the wait was over. At last, the wait was over.

 

***

 

postscript

***

 

Fujiwara no Sai felt more than saw the change in the light around him. The source of the change was a warmth behind him, and he lifted his head to it.

“Sai,” breathed the young man. The standard on his back was the royal court’s, an archer’s quiver hung from his waist. In his hands were three camellias: one red, one yellow, one white.

Tears spilled down Sai’s pale cheeks.

“Is…is it really you?”

The man nodded and held out his hand. Sai gently threaded their fingers together.

“I thought I would never see you again,” he said. “When they banished me from the palace, I couldn’t bear the thought of living without you. I…”

The young man cupped his face. 

“I waited for you at the river every night. When I died, I couldn’t cross until I was sure you would be there too. I prayed to the river goddess for a thousand years that she might bring you back to me. She’s heard me, she’s answered my prayers.”

Sai trembled, leaning in to press their foreheads together.

“I’ve been so terribly selfish,” Sai said, brushing a tear from the young man’s cheek. “I have no right to ask this of you. But could you waitwith me a moment longer? There’s something that I have to do.”

Sai drew the fan from the sleeve of his kimono. He took the hand of his companion, and together they walked through the mist toward the warm yellow light of a young boy’s dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Red Camellia - Love  
> Yellow Camellia - Longing  
> White Camellia - Waiting
> 
> I was deeply inspired by this essay:
> 
> https://stirring-still.livejournal.com/4687.html
> 
> In particular, the explanations for the naming conventions in Hikaru no Go made me imagine a past in which the Touyas’ ancestor is an archer in the royal army, and also the clandestine lover of Sai, Hikaru’s distant ancestor. 
> 
> I always thought it was a bit melodramatic for Sai to have killed himself purely because of go—I imagine that there would have been a complicated set of circumstances that included losing the ability to play go professionally. Hence, a lost love.
> 
> The postscript is my little headcanon, where by guiding Hikaru to a place where he can be Akira’s perfect match, Sai redeems himself for abandoning his lover when he commits suicide. And now everyone gets to be happy!
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


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